Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir
Other Press, September 2008
Hurry Down Sunshine tells the story of the extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg's daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally's sudden visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and
continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan
psychiatric ward during the city's most sweltering months. "I feel like
I'm traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to," Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine. Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her -- her mother and stepmother, her brother and grandmother, and, not least of all, the author himself.
Among Greenberg's unforgettable gallery of characters are an
unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic
Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary
aspirations. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane. Hurry Down Sunshine holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.
hardcover | ISBN: 9781590511916 | Publication Date: September 2008
Reviews:
“In its detail, depth, richness, and sheer intelligence,
Hurry Down Sunshine will be recognized as a classic of its kind, along
with the memoirs of Kay Redfield Jamison and John
Custance….Lucid, realistic, compassionate, illuminating, Hurry
Down Sunshine may provide a sort of guide for those who have to
negotiate the dark regions of the soul—a guide, too, for their
families and friends, for all those who want to understand what their
loved ones are going through. Perhaps, too, it will remind us of
what a narrow ridge of normality we all inhabit, with the abysses of
mania and depression yawning to either side.”
—Oliver Sacks, The New York Review of Books
“There is a dancing, dazzling siren seductress at the heart of
this book and…[it is] madness itself….The startling
associative imagery that gives Greenberg’s writing its power is
like a domesticated version of the madness that nearly carried away his
daughter’s life.”
—Lev Grossman, Time
“[A] remarkable memoir….Few things in life are sadder or
more frightening than watching a loved one transported far away,
swiftly and irrevocably, by illness. In the summer of 1996, Michael
Greenberg’s vivacious 15-year-old daughter, Sally, was gripped by
a psychotic episode from which she and her family are still
recovering.….What sets Hurry Down Sunshine apart from the great
horde of mediocre memoirs, with their sitcom emotions and too neatly
resolved fights and reconciliations, is Greenberg’s frank
pessimism, dark humor and fundamental incapacity to make sense of his
daughter’s ordeal.”
—Rachel Donadio, The New York Times Book Review
“A triumphant story…. Greenberg renders the details of his
daughter’s breakdown with lyrical precision.”
—Nell Casey, The Washington Post
“[Hurry Down Sunshine] is about tenacity and tenderness, feeling
helpless but being present, about cracking up, then finding the
wherewithal to glue the jagged pieces of your mind back together
again. But mostly it’s about love.”
—Oprah Winfrey, in her letter to readers in O, The Oprah Magazine
“This memoir of a family crisis captures the grief that
transformed their lives….readers come away with a sense of the
intractable nature of psychosis and the courage it requires for
patients like Sally, whose struggles continue, merely to live.”
—People
“[Hurry Down Sunshine’s] fundamental strength arises from
Greenberg’s insistence on facing the demons that held his girl in
their dark thrall. Sally’s descent and tentative return form the
map for this story; Greenberg’s courage lies in his willingness
to follow her down that terrible path, no matter where it leads.”
—Bookforum
“[Hurry Down Sunshine] is an excellent memoir—written by
the father of a 15-year old daughter about her descent into psychosis,
diagnosis with bipolar disorder, and the impact on their extended,
blended family….Greenberg’s description of life on a
psychiatric ward is exceptional: marked by critical insight and
occasionally dark humor.”
—NAMI Advocate
“Greenberg’s elegiac, beautifully crafted memoir
chronicles the summer his teenaged daughter, Sally, lost her mind to
madness. …At times acutely painful, at times painfully funny,
his story alternates between the progression of Sally’s
bewildering, frightening decline and Greenberg’s own at times
comically absurd experience as he simultaneously deals with a dependent
brother suffering from his own demons; a difficult, obtuse wife; and a
New Age ex-wife who, after each visit, offers cosmic explanations for
her daughter’s condition before retreating to her home in the
country. …The whole effect is one of a wrathful storm passing
through Greenberg’s life, turning every relationship upside down
as it shattered any semblance of inner peace in both father and
daughter and destroyed their ability to communicate at the time. Sure
to become a new classic in the literature of mental illness.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“Greenberg, a native New Yorker and columnist for the Times
Literary Supplement, writes with unflinching honesty and heart. He
brilliantly renders daily life in a Manhattan psych ward….The
result is a startling piece of writing, by turns sobering and
surreal.”
—Booklist, starred review
“An intense account of a young girl's manic depression, told by
her father in crystalline prose with searing intensity. Passionate and
unforgettable.”
—Shelf Awareness
“[Greenberg’s] erudite portrait of bipolar disease as
experienced from both inside and out is dazzling…Bears
enlightening and articulate witness to the sheer force of an
oft-misunderstood disease.”
—Kirkus Reviews
